Touch-Screen Voting Approved in New York

Moving further away from the tried-and-true method of voting with paper ballots, the New York Board of Elections approved the use of touch-screen voting machines for future elections.

Government reform groups and other opponents of the machines said the decision is “bad for voters.” Touch-screen ballots don’t leave a verified paper trail and are potentially vulnerable to hackers that could swing an election away from the true winner, critics charge.

Currently, all voting machines in New York operate with paper ballots that voters fill out by hand and feed into a tallying machine. The ballots are available for recounts and other challenges.

Election Commissioner Douglas Kellner, one of two Democrats on the four-person board, questioned whether the lack of an actual paper ballot violates state law, which requires that there be a paper trail that can be used if a recount is called. “We should be steering county elections officials towards hand-marked papers,” Kellner said. “This system is significantly more expensive and has these other issues and lacks the confidence of a substantial number of voters in the community.”

Republican Commissioner Peter Kosinski disagreed with Kellner, arguing that it’s up to the individual counties to decide on using the machines. “That's not our job,” Kosinski said. “If the county voters and their county board say, ‘We don't like this type of machine because we can't do X, Y and Z with it,’ then the county can say, ‘We’re not going to buy it.’”

File Photo

Known as the ExpressVote XL, the touch-screen systems are made by a company called Election System and Software. Voters can tap the candidates they want and then the machine converts the ballot into a barcode, which is then fed into a machine that records the results. Critics say the process is wide open to fraud and manipulation.

Kellner voted no to the certification, but the other Democrat on the board, Andrew Spano, voted with the two other Republicans to approve the machines.

Common Cause, one of several groups that oppose the voting method, said New York already uses the best available voting machines and should not change them.

“Our concerns are really that why would we move away from the gold standard that we currently have, in which a voter marks their own ballot, and it's scanned in, to move to a system that is more insecure,” said the group’s Susan Goff. “It's incredibly expensive. And the idea of transitioning voting machines, right before a very consequential election cycle, and 2024 just seems like a bad idea.”

Goff predicted that skepticism over the machines will “fan the flames” of misinformation regarding the safety and security of public elections.Following the vote, Common Cause called the certification of the machines “an exceedingly poor decision.”